Has there ever been a better time to watch television? I remember from my childhood how many hours of boring TV we had to withstand to find the good stuff. Today's viewers need never be bored. They can watch what they want, when they want, with advertisements and online content digitally tailored to their preferences and adding to their enjoyment.

At the same time, the production values of programmes are getting better. Take the dramas coming out of Channel 4 at the moment – The Fear, Complicit or Utopia. The visual quality, originality and art direction of these is eye-popping. To watch them on a large HD screen in your living room is a fantastic experience.

These advances come with their own challenges, and the increasing complexity of the media industry makes prediction a difficult game. But with each challenge comes an opportunity. Indeed, I believe there has never been a more exciting time to work in broadcasting.

Media people of my generation have seen major changes in technology throughout our careers.

Once we watched film on telecine and presented materials to advertising clients in projection rooms, and Opticals were done expensively after rough cuts were approved. It was an analogue, manual process.

But now, digital tools are impacting at every stage. They are helping collaboration at critical points. Everything has become more seamless.

Misunderstandings earlier in the process are reduced.

Meanwhile, for younger people who work in short form media, the opportunities for doing exciting work and getting it out virally have exploded. People no longer need to go to film school to learn to put a showreel together. There is a conveyor belt of young talent into the industry.

Digital is also enabling viewers to engage in new ways.

Perhaps you enjoy Channel 4 News in the evening and you relate to Jon Snow, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Matt Frei and Cathy Newman. Maybe you're getting their personal take on the news agenda by subscribing to Snowmail, which drops updates into your inbox.

Or perhaps you no longer read the listings pages as there's a recommendation engine, within the network you're using, that's highly relevant to you.

In this way, television has become even more of a social medium than before. We know this is true because we can measure it more accurately. Our industry has been based on coming to work in the morning and waiting for the 'overnights' – the raw numbers from which we try to extract the audience response. But now, with media connected to the 'social graph', with online connections running in parallel with linear viewing, the feedback opportunities are much more dynamic.

I believe this is enhancing the power of linear television, rather than detracting from it. Recently we launched Utopia, a dark urban drama whose very plotline is a form of interaction with online platforms.

High quality scripted drama like that scores better than anything else in the catch-up platforms. It has a depth. Viewers don't want to miss an episode and they can watch when they want, in a connected online environment.

We have more than six million people signed up to 4oD (Four On Demand) and they are starting to use favourites and playlists to create their own unique viewing schedules. The new digital tools allow us to track popularity and understand it – and, critically for Channel 4, we can offer that information as part of our proposition to advertisers. We are a self-funded public broadcaster that has to innovate in the commercial space. If audiences are increasingly gathering online, there is a tremendous opportunity for that attention to be evaluated and shared – with the audience's agreement – with advertisers. In that way the experience becomes personalised and relevant to the viewer. With the better experience comes more investment, and therefore better content, creating a virtuous circle.

Some say this digital cohesion will detract from the importance of channel brands. But to produce hits you need to take creative risks, and to do that you need pools of investment. To spread that risk and introduce new ideas, traditional channels will still be needed. And as they negotiate this increasingly complex future, channels must keep their faith in their editorial judgment.

But they also need to think through how they work in a connected environment. In time – we're not sure quite when – most main screens will be connected with the Internet. What effect will that have on ad breaks, for example? How can promotional schedules be tailored to the viewer? How might some of the subsidiary material that sits below the linear channel work in a more personalised way?

No one can be sure exactly how these changes will play out. But at Channel 4 we are preparing for the future by embracing the process of thinking about multiplatform creativity, not as a separate activity but as part of the commissioning and programming whole. We develop applications, solutions and pieces of content that support the programming. Some are radical and bold: the Embarrassing Bodies franchise, for example, went live using Skype: the audience were able to present their health problems directly to a team of doctors. Million Pound Drop Live has been an extraordinary success both in the UK and around the world. There is a high correlation between those playing along live online and those watching the show.

From a leadership perspective, it's increasingly challenging, when allocating resources, to decide what is a product, what is content, what is an application and what is an experience on a platform. But one thing is certain: it is critically important that digital creatives should sit alongside the commissioning teams and work together to prioritise where they want to put their investments.

In one sense there's nothing new in this. Creativity and technology have always been orchestrated in television, changing each other as they changed.

Ten years ago we went through the multichannel revolution, which affected everything we did. Now we are on the cusp of another big transition. It makes the industry a tremendously vibrant place to be.

Looking forward, I believe passionately that the cultural and editorial value of broadcasting will survive. The question is whether broadcasting itself can remain independent, or whether it will become a subset of global technology companies. Telecoms and broadband industries will have to use content as a differentiator, so the victors in the platform wars will become proportionately more important to the content providers, as they decide who their partners should be.

In this new space, Channel 4 and the BBC have a strong public service role to play. They have to stay true to their remit and original purpose. We should never underestimate the importance the viewer places on original, British-made content that has a broader mission than simply maximising the profits of a global technology platform.

That is not to say that new technology platforms do not also present new opportunities. The multichannel revolution, for example, created many more jobs in the industry, and recently we have been looking hard at how mobile devices boost the enjoyment of content that works in shorter forms and in slightly different time lengths. It is worth remembering that there is seven times more short form video going through the Internet than long form. This tells us something about the way in which viewers consume video on new platforms. In time it will affect genres like news and comedy, where they can be delivered in shorter time lengths.

Assessing the relationship between short and long form will be one of the many challenges of the next few years. In making our editorial and commercial judgments, however, we will have a wonderful new weapon on our side: the digital tools that connect us more closely than ever before with our audience. Our best work, I am convinced, is still to come.